FILE: Peaches Christ stands at a Justice for Heklina protest in London over the death of the San Francisco drag star on March 31, 2025.
FILE: Peaches Christ stands at a Justice for Heklina protest in London over the death of the San Francisco drag star on March 31, 2025.
Police in London have announced San Francisco drag legend Heklina’s cause of death, concluding a three-and-a-half-year-long investigation that sent shock waves through San Francisco’s arts communities after the performer was found dead in a SoHo flat by her friend, fellow drag luminary Peaches Christ, in 2023. Now, police are also admitting the case was mishandled because of “investigative bias” after CCTV footage of three men leaving Heklina’s flat was not released for 21 months, leading to widespread public scrutiny.
Heklina, born Stefan Thor Grygelko, died of acute mixed drug toxicity, with cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamines, GHB and ketamine among the illegal substances found in her system, the San Francisco Chronicle first reported after reviewing the Sept. 15 inquest. Police determined that she had consumed the drugs consensually over the course of 48 hours.
Peaches Christ, also known as Joshua Grannell, was sharing a flat with Heklina while they rehearsed for an upcoming production; the duo were days away from co-starring in a two-week run of the musical parody “Mommie Queerest” at the Soho Theatre. Grannell had checked into a hotel over the weekend after Heklina expressed interest in using their flat to arrange sexual encounters with men she met on gay hookup apps. The morning Grannell returned, he found the door had been left ajar, and her belongings were strewn all over the flat, Grannell previously told SFGATE. Drugs were present, indicating she had relapsed after years of sobriety. It wasn’t until he stepped into the living room that he found his friend on the floor, in drag and motionless. He realized she was cold to the touch.
FILE: Heklina onstage during Wigstock 2018 at Pier 17 on Sept. 1, 2018, in New York City.
FILE: Heklina onstage during Wigstock 2018 at Pier 17 on Sept. 1, 2018, in New York City.
Grannell immediately called police and was ruled out as a suspect but said it took years for the coroner to release an autopsy report or other official paperwork. In May 2023, he helped put on a memorial for her at the Castro Theatre that drew thousands of people and shut down the street. A tribute to her was featured on an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and her likeness was added to the “Showtime” mural at Oasis. Meanwhile, communication from London Metropolitan police all but dwindled; Grannell said he and Nancy French, Heklina’s close friend and legal next of kin, often went months without hearing from them.
Grannell began to wonder if the circumstances under which Heklina’s body was found had contributed to prejudice in the investigation. A month before her death, an independent review of Met police led by Baroness Louise Casey found evidence of institutional homophobia within the department. Those suspicions were confirmed in emails reviewed by SFGATE and by London police in a conversation over Zoom in February 2024, when Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Dean Purvis told Grannell and French an officer had been removed from the case over “conscious or unconscious bias.”
The release of the CCTV footage in January 2025 was the first public update they received since the announcement of Heklina’s death at the age of 55. Grannell said he doesn’t believe this information would have come to light had he not reached out to an editor at the Guardian, who assigned a reporter to a story about the investigation. Later that March, police Staff Investigator Nathalie Juchau — the fifth investigator assigned to lead the case — traveled to California to speak with Grannell and French, confirming that “a combination of an amount of drugs that would be considered lethal” were found in Heklina’s system, the specifics of which were not shared publicly.
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FILE: A screenshot of CCTV shows three men outside Heklina’s flat in London around the time of her death.
FILE: A screenshot of CCTV shows three men outside Heklina’s flat in London around the time of her death.
FILE: A screenshot of CCTV shows three men outside Heklina’s flat in London around the time of her death.
FILE: A screenshot of CCTV shows three men outside Heklina’s flat in London around the time of her death.
Criticism over the handling of the investigation culminated in dual protests that same month. People marched from Big Ben to Scotland Yard in London, and from the Stud to Oasis stateside — the bar where Heklina first shaped San Francisco’s alternative drag scene in the 1990s through T-Shack, a DIY punk spectacle of a show than ran every Tuesday night for 12 years, and the queer nightclub she co-founded in SoMa in 2014.
“London Met, you’re not done yet,” the crowds chanted.
A recent statement provided to SFGATE by Met Police Detective Chief Superintendent Christina Jessah said that detectives “found no evidence to suggest third party involvement or that his death was suspicious,” but acknowledged “the initial investigation into Steven’s death was not good enough.”
“While the shortcomings identified ultimately had no bearing on the outcome of this tragedy, the investigation did not meet the high standards we expect of ourselves,” Jessah wrote. “We also recognise that our early poor communication with Steven’s next of kin compounded their grief at what was already an incredibly difficult time. We have apologised to them directly.”
During a conversation over Zoom last week, Grannell told SFGATE he wasn’t surprised by the latest developments.
FILE: A memorial to deceased drag performer Heklina, a legendary San Francisco performer who died in early April 2023, stands at the Drag March LA during an Easter Sunday protest against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country on April 9, 2023, in West Hollywood, Calif.
FILE: A memorial to deceased drag performer Heklina, a legendary San Francisco performer who died in early April 2023, stands at the Drag March LA during an Easter Sunday protest against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country on April 9, 2023, in West Hollywood, Calif.
“It’s more just kind of shocking and frustrating that it took so long to get us to the point where we got the answer that I think we thought we were going to get,” he said from the Old Mint, where he was preparing for opening weekend of his annual immersive haunt, Terror Vault. “Because of being ignored and the frustrations of the Met, it doesn’t feel like closure.”
What has confounded him is what he’s learned about the Met police’s “huge and well-documented history of a bias against queer people,” citing the recent case involving serial killer and rapist Stephen Port, who murdered four young men he met on Grindr in London in 2014 and 2015. In 2021, the BBC reported that police failed to link the deaths, accepted fake evidence and ignored grieving families looking for answers.
“When it was determined that this department had a systemic homophobia problem, they were supposed to change,” Grannell said. “So I feel like our job as friends and activists and people with a platform was to hold them accountable, which is what we did.”
Following the conclusion of the investigation, UK-based television and documentary production company CMG Productions announced it will be producing a documentary about Heklina, tracing the life of “a drag queen who changed the world,” which will also serve as “an indictment of the institution that failed her.” The film is expected to include decades of footage from Heklina’s performance archive that Grannell recently fundraised to digitize and put online with the help of the GLBT Historical Society — what he described as “thousands of hours’ worth of shows” from “boxes and boxes and boxes of videotapes.” Grannell and the filmmaking team hope to release the documentary within the next few years.
FILE: Performers commemorate Heklina outside of the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
FILE: Performers commemorate Heklina outside of the Castro Theatre on Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
FILE: Fauxnique at Heklina’s memorial on May 23, 2023, at the Castro Theatre.
FILE: Fauxnique at Heklina’s memorial on May 23, 2023, at the Castro Theatre.
“It’s something tangible to throw my creative brain into and to be a part of, to sort of make sense of this nightmare,” Grannell said. “If we are able to use this film to tell the extraordinary story of this trailblazer who was very truly punk rock and really did things for drag that had not been done, then that’s the thing I can kind of get excited about and spend time and energy on.”
Grannell’s hope is that young people who are exposed to Heklina’s story will find a source of inspiration and a narrative about her artform they may not be accustomed to, one that existed long before the televised days of “Drag Race.”
“I think a lot of young queer people don’t really know what drag was like before that show existed, and I think they’re surprised when they realize, oh no, drag was way more shocking, way more button pushing, way more interesting, quite frankly,” he said, “so a documentary about Heklina is sort of the silver lining that I’m kind of leaning into.”
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